Kenneth
JandaPolitical Parties: A Cross-National SurveyNew York: The Free
Press, 1980: pp. 892-893DAHOMEY (now Benin): The Party System in 1950-1956 and
1957-19621

(Text
as published in 1980 citation above)

A narrow country running north-south
along the western boundary of Nigeria but with access to the
sea, Dahomey was long governed as a French colony. Under the
French constitution of 1946, Dahomey obtained a deputy
(shared with Togo) in the French Assembly and a territorial
assembly of its own with budgetary powers. Politics in
Dahomey became marked with regional overtones, with the
basic division being between the north and the more populous
south. A southerner, Sourou Apithy, was the first deputy
elected to the French National Assembly in 1946, when the
franchise was restricted to some 50,000 voters.

In 1951, the electorate was enlarged to over 300,000 and
the number of deputies to the National Assembly was
increased to two. Apithy organized the Parti
Républicain du Dahomeeén (PRD) to support his
reelection. He was joined in victory by Herbert Maga, a
northerner who soon countered with his own Groupement
Ethnique du Nord Dahomey (GEND). Another southerner, Justin
Ahomadegbe, whose support was based in the labor unions of
Cotonou (and on ethnic support from Abomey in the center),
formed the third major political force in Dahomean politics
when he developed his Union Démocratique
Dahomeénne (UDD). These three men and their political
organizations dominated the political scene during the
remainder of our time period.

As a result of the 1956 French Overseas Reform Act (loi
cadre), Dahomey acquired control of most territorial
matters, and universal adult suffrage was in effect for the
1957 elections. Apithy's PRD won a majority of the seats,
with the remainder divided between Maga's GEND and
Ahomadegbe's UDD. Apithy led the government until the
elections of 1959, when disputed results led to an agreed
division of seats that gave no party a majority. Maga, whose
party had changed its name to the Ressemblement Democratique
Dahomeén (RDD), became premier in coalition with the
UDD. After Dahomey achieved full independence from France in
1960, Maga's RDD and Apithy's party, now called the Parti
des Nationalistes Dahomiens (PND), formed a coalition party
called the Parti Dahomeén de l'Unité (PDU).
The PDU, however, was little more than a coalition of the
RDD and PND, with both parties retaining their separate
identity. With Maga and Apithy as PDU candidates for
president and vice president in the 1960 elections, the PDU
list won all the seats, and Dahomey became a one-party
state. Maga headed the government throughout our time period
and until a military coup in 1963.

Continuity and Change since
1962

Maneuverings
among the three major party leaders in Dahomey continued
after the coup of 1963 just as before. Having served as vice
president in Maga's government just before the coup, Apithy
became president in 1964 and had Ahomadegbe as his vice
president. After a series of coups in 1965, 1967, and 1969,
the realities of regionalism and leadership in party
politics were recognized with the creation of a civilian
government in which Maga, Apithy, and Ahomadegbe were to
take turns being president in a Presidential Council. A
leftist army officer, Major Mathieu Kerekou, overthrew the
squabbling triumvirate in 1972 and placed all three party
leaders under house arrest, effectively ending their
parties. None of our three original parties continued to
1978, and one new party qualified for study.

Original
Parties, Terminated

802
Nationalist Party. Although its identity was
camouflaged under different titles in different party
coalitions (e.g., PDU, and PDD), Apithy's party remained
essentially his party regardless of its name. Therefore, we
do not regard his PND as having terminated until 1972, when
Major Mathieu Kerekou overthrew the triumvirate and arrested
Apithy.

803 Democratic Union. The same analysis applies
for Ahomadegbe's UDD, which coalesced with Apithy's party to
form the governing Dahomean Democratic Party (PDD) in 1964
and 1965. This alliance was ended by a coup, but Ahomadegbe
retained his personal party until 1972 when Kerekou took
control of the government and arrested Ahomadegbe as one of
the former governing triumvirate.

804 Democratic Rally. Maga's RDD coalesced with
Apithy's party in 1960 to form the governing Dahomean Party
of Unity (PDU), which governed until a coup in 1963. Maga's
personal party organization ended with the 1972 military
coup and his detention.

NewParty,
Continuing

805
People's Revolutionary Party. This party was organized
in 1975 by Kerekou, who renamed the country Benin and
proclaimed it a "people's republic." Keredou had governed
without a legislature until the elections of 1978, in which
his PRPB took all the seats.

Summary

It appears that Kerekou put an end to the three-cornered
game that Apithy, Ahomadegbe, and Maga had made of party
politics in Dahomey. It remains to be seen how well his
single-party state will govern Benin.

1. Our study of party politics in Dahomey
is based on a file of 434 pages from 19 documents, 11 in
English and 8 in French. Most of the pages in the file,
however, are in French (see Table 1.3). The bibliographic
search and indexing of material for the file was done by
James Stephens and Jean Jacobsohn. Larry Higgins used the
file to code the Dahomean parties on the variables in the
ICPP conceptual framework. Our outside consultant was
George Martens.